The Send Off
by Kizzia
Summary: Sherlock presses his fingers to the few stitches visible above the jeans, his warmth bleeding through them and the red cotton to John's skin beneath. 'Will you tell me' My entry for the FuckYeahJohnlockFanFic Red Pants Contest - Johnlock, Post-Reichenbach, reunion fic, angst, mentions of suicide, minor character death, established relationship. Rate T to be safe.


_Written for the FYJFF Red pants contest, this has not been written for profit and is in no way intended to infringe the copyright. Sherlock belongs to the BBC, Moffat, Gatiss and ACD and I have merely borrowed the characters._

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Sherlock presses his fingers to the few stitches visible above the jeans, his warmth bleeding through them and the red cotton to John's skin beneath.

'Will you tell me?' His voice is uncharacteristically uncertain but the hitch and tremor makes John feel better, helps him calm his racing heart.

'Why do you want to know?'

'Because they mean something,' Sherlock briefly rests his forehead against John's before pulling back and looking straight into John's eyes, 'They mean something to you and you, you mean …' His hand tightens on John's hip, thumb rubbing over the flesh just above the white elastic as the other slides up John's back, between t-shirt and skin, pulling him closer, 'you mean everything to me.'

John closes his eyes and lets his head drop onto Sherlock's shoulder, nudging aside the open collar and pressing his nose into the dip of Sherlock's collar bone so he can just breathe _him_ for moment. Needing the reminder even after ten hours of Sherlock being there, explaining everything, even apologising, that this isn't an illusion, that Sherlock's really here. He feels his hands tightening in the fabric of Sherlock's shirt, wanting to hold on to this moment forever.

'I'm not going anywhere,' Sherlock murmurs, 'I promise you, John. I'll never leave you again.'

John exhales, breath shaking out of trembling lips, 'It's a long story.'

'We have time,' Sherlock says, releasing John's hip to wrap his arm right round him and pull them both down onto the sofa, 'It's over, I'm back and we have all the time in the world.'

John smiles against Sherlock's skin before lifting his head and sliding his hand back down to where the pants are still visible above the waistband of his too-loose jeans, rubbing his own thumb over the letters. Sherlock's hand comes to rest over his own, a comforting weight that anchors him as he tries to order his thoughts.

'They started out as a joke … flung at me by Matt as I walked into the accommodation block at the start of our two week's leave. We were about to fly out on our first tour in Afghanistan, the rest of the company were spending the time with their families and we'd decided on a proper night out in Bristol. I'd been thinking about Harry and wondering where she actually was and I wasn't concentrating so I only just grabbed them before they hit me in the face. Danny was crowing "Lucky pants!" in between snorts of laughter, Bill had his _what_ _can you do with them_ face on and Matt was already next to me. They were all grinning like idiots and dressed for the night.

Once I'd shaken the fabric out and looked at them properly I'd asked who in their right mind would wear red cotton pants with a white trim when they were going out on the pull.

"A bloke up for a little fun," Matt had said, slinging one arm round my shoulders and winking, "You've shagged more women than the rest of us put together since we teamed up, without so much as a lucky sock to aid you. I think it's tipping the odds in your favour and needs to be … rectified. So tonight you'll be wearing those, we'll live up to the regimental title and that should let us even the numbers up a bit."

I took it in the spirit in which it was meant, as a challenge and … well, one thing lead to another and if I tell you that was the night I earned the nickname "Three-continents" Watson I'm sure you can deduce what happened.'

A quiet huff of laughter in his ear eases the tightness in John's chest. He hasn't talked about Matt and Danny for years. Not even with Bill, not even when … he swallows, hard and Sherlock's arms tighten round him.

'Needless to say Matt wasn't pleased his plan hadn't worked and he and Danny banned me from wearing them out again. I kept them though, took them to Afghanistan stuffed in a pocket of my kit bag. I'm still not sure why, since I certainly hadn't intended to put them on again, ever. I did though. After Matt …'

John leans his head into the crook of Sherlock's neck and closes his eyes. He can still feel the packed dirt underfoot, see the air around him shimmering in the intense heat, and hear Matt's muted laughter at something Barnsey's just said.

'It was just a routine patrol, in Kajaki. It was a nice change of pace as we'd been on special ops the three weeks prior and it felt almost, well, normal. We'd almost finished, just one abandoned house left, set back from the street with scrub behind and to the side. We worked it just like we worked every other one, Matt and Barnsey to the left, Danny and Jones to the right, Bill and I sweeping what was left of the inside and Vicey and Hale watching the street. I'd just finished checking what was left of the upstairs and was heading out the front when it happened. An explosion at the back of the house. Knocked Bill and I off our feet and for a moment I thought we'd been hit by an RPG, that we were under attack. But when there was no follow up other than Barnsey yelling for me over the radio I knew. Matt looked like a rag doll when I got to him, the IED had blown both his legs off and half of one arm . I did what I could but there was too much damage. I couldn't stop the bleeding and by the time they got the chopper with the evac team to us he was gone.'

John clenches his jaw so tightly his teeth hurt, inhaling deeply through his nose before pushing the breath out through his teeth.

'I don't remember much about the rest of that day. I ... I can't say you ever get used to death, to watching someone's life drain out into the dirt in front of you but it wasn't new, wasn't anything any of us hadn't seen before. We'd all lost friends, all mourned inside while we just got on with it but this was Matt. He … he was family. The four of us were a family. Had been since we realised we'd rather not talk about our blood relatives never mind spend our leave visiting them. You're close to everyone in your company but it was more than that between us. He wasn't just under my command, he was my brother in every way that was important and I … I couldn't save him when it counted.'

Sherlock's lips are moving against John's hair but whatever he's saying would be too soft for John to hear even if he wasn't lost in his memories.

'What I do remember is coming back to my tent after washing his blood off me and finding Danny sitting there, face completely blank, not answering when I spoke to him. I was so intent on getting dressed and getting him sorted – I assumed he'd gone into delayed shock - that I didn't pay attention to what I was putting one. I probably wouldn't even have realised I'd grabbed the red pants out of my pack if Danny hadn't chosen that moment to blink and say, "Yes, you should wear those. It's a good tribute." So I did.'

John makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

'I wore them as we watched Matt's body leave for Bastion and the onward trip home and I wondered if either his Dad or his brother would be arsed to go to his funeral at all. The next night Bill, Danny and I lit a fire out the back of the compound, drank to Matt with mugs of tea and then, as they looked on, I stitched his initials onto the pants.'

John looks down again, at the most faded of the black stitching, feeling a feather light kiss to his temple even as Sherlock runs a finger underneath the initials M.J.B.

'Matthew James Blackwood,' he says in response to the unspoken question. 'Five foot eleven, reddish brown hair and hazel eyes that seemed to spend all their time dancing with barely suppressed glee. He was one of those people who could make you feel better just by being in the room, could make people laugh with a few words. I can still his eyes going dull and flat even as I told him it would be alright, that I was there and he was going to be alright and ...'

They sit in silence; John unable to find his voice and Sherlock simply holding him, nose buried in his hair, their left hands remaining intertwined, Sherlock's right now resting over John's heart.

Eventually Sherlock murmurs, 'It's nearly four in the morning and you're exhausted. Do you want to go to bed?'

John shakes his head, tightening his grip on Sherlock's hand, 'Ngh ...' he croaks before clearing his throat and trying again, 'No. I won't be able to sleep. Besides, I want to tell you. I don't want there to be any more secrets. Not now.'

He feels Sherlock's nod of acquiescence but he wants more, turning in the circle of his arms until he can make out the shape of Sherlock's face in the gloom; the room lit only by the glow of the street lamps outside. His right cheek is slightly swollen but the silhouette is still so blessedly familiar that for a second John thinks he might be dreaming. Then Sherlock flexes his fingers over John's chest and John takes a breath in the present and then returns to a past that still feels like it happened yesterday.

'The pants went back into my pack, wrapped in a plastic bag and tucked right at the bottom where they wouldn't get lost. And there they stayed; for the rest of that tour and two years following. By the time we were slated to return to Sangin for another tour the pants had become a part of my gear that couldn't be left behind, the three of us were still close, still on the same fire team but a few things had changed; Harry and I were back in contact, Bill had been dating Mary for six months and Danny was married to a lovely girl called Lydia. She was two months pregnant when we shipped out for that second tour of duty and I can still hear her, trying to sound upbeat as she saw us off, saying it was good timing because he'd be back just before the birth.'

John grimaces, his mouth going tight, eyelids flickering rapidly, 'He was dead two weeks later. A patrol that turned into a blood bath. How we missed the i-com chatter that would have warned us I'll never know but one minute everything was peaceful and then next Barnsey was down, hit in the leg and arm and we're in a hailstorm of bullets. I was so caught up getting Barnsey to cover and giving Hale instructions on keeping him alive while we tried to identify where the fuck they were shooting from and tried to close down the guy with the RPG launcher I didn't even see Danny fall. Not that I could have done anything. He took a bullet straight through the neck. He'd have been dead before he hit the ground ... We managed to get a chopper down for the evac - thank God, as Jones was down as well by that point and losing blood fast - but there was another fight going on out at Laskar Gah so the rest of us had to make our own way back to base without aerial support. It was a complete fucking mess and by the time we made it back I already knew what I needed to do. Bill, to his credit, didn't question me, just went and made the tea.'

John rubs a hand over his face before dropping it to his pants, wriggling so that that D.B.F. is visible above the denim as well.

'Lydia had a little boy. Named him after his Dad too, so there is still a Daniel Benjamin Ford in this world. He'll be five this October, my Danny would have been thirty. I picture him as being exactly like Danny, white blond hair and soft features, quiet but intensely loyal and caring. I've no idea if I'm right, I've never seen him. I'd intended to go and visit Lydia once the tour had finished, give her the photos I had of Danny and try to explain but ... well, you know what happened to me. By the time I got out of hospital and was in any shape to see her little Danny had been born, she'd made it quite clear to Bill she wanted nothing to do with any of us and I wasn't ... I didn't want to relive it. I almost got rid of all my mementos but when it came down to it there were a few things I couldn't part with – the pants, my dog tags, the photos and the bloody medal.'

'The tin box,' Sherlock breathed.

'Yeah, I'm surprised you never looked in there. You rummaged through everything else I owned.'

'I had my own box. I understood.'

John shakes his head, dismissing the urge to ask about it, to turn the conversation onto a different track. It wouldn't be right. Not now, now that he has this opportunity. And Sherlock's already talked enough today.

From the first, soft _John_ as he'd touched his shoulder at the graveyard - which had resulted in John delivering a swift left hook that was more from shock than anger - through the long explanation delivered in Sherlock's usual biting tones but without the usual belittlement of any of John's interjections or queries and then - after John had finally conceded that he couldn't walk another step and Sherlock had got them a taxi back to Baker Street - Sherlock's apology. Which admittedly had been less about the halting, whispered sentences that flowed from Sherlock's lips like half remembered lullabies and more about the look in his eyes as he'd reached out for John, a mix of fear and need that, when John did nothing to stop him, morphed into relief and a depth of love that John had never thought to see there.

Which is why he can't stop now. Why, despite wanting more than anything to just take Sherlock to bed and pretend the past three years haven't happened, he has to keep going. Because he knows he will break if tries to hide this and if he breaks, he can see Sherlock will too and that is not an option. Not now he can see what they can be together, now that Sherlock is trying to let him in. So he has to make Sherlock realise just where he was in his own head this morning, has to make him understand how deep the hurt runs_,_ to know just how close he came to the edge. He knows this will be hard, harder than what has gone before, but nothing worth having is ever won easily so he sets his jaw, reaches for Sherlock's face, eyes finding Sherlock's in the pre-dawn light, and starts to speak again.

'Apart from putting it in the back of my drawer when I moved my stuff in I didn't touch that box for eighteen months. It wasn't that I'd forgotten about it, I could never forget that part of my life, but the hold it had over me was gone. Because what we were, together, was so much more than anything I'd ever expected to have ... to experience ... to be living ... that I stopped looking at the past. Stopped compairing my life to the lives of those around me and just focused on the here and now. And it was glorious, Sherlock! It was the best eighteen months of my life. I needed you but you needed me just as much and it felt right. Everything felt as if it was where it was supposed to be. You may never had said the words, never looked at me like you have tonight but I felt loved nonetheless. Loved for me, the whole of me, everything I was, just as I was. Just like I loved you ... and then I watched you jump. I ... God, Sherlock I still can't ... I lost more than you that day.'

Sherlock opens his mouth, to say what John doesn't know and he doesn't care. He can't hear it now so he presses his thumb over Sherlock's lips and shushes him, brain scrambling to find the next words.

'I don't know who called Bill - he never said and I never asked - but he found me the next morning, still sat on the landing outside the flat. I'd come back because I had nowhere else to go but I couldn't come in. I ... I kept expecting you to bound through the front door, run up the stairs and tell me what had happened, to explain why the world wasn't as I'd thought it was and I knew that if I walked through that door it would be real and I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready to live without out you! Bill was brilliant. He didn't say anything, just sat down next to me and stayed there until I found the courage to get up and go in. I barely made it through the door before I froze up but he steered me over to my chair and just let me be while he made tea. Then he asked me where the pants were. I didn't understand at first, until he said that he may not have known you well but he knew me and that I wouldn't have loved a fake. That he followed what we did on my blog, in the newspapers and while we may not have been on the front line we'd been fighting a war nonetheless and that you were a casualty. Same as Matt. Same as Danny. He said you deserved the same honour.'

John releases Sherlock's face and shifts backwards so he can unbutton his jeans and roll the waistband over, exposing another set of stitches. Sherlock makes a low, pained sound but John ignores it, takes his hand and makes him trace the S and H; the letters slightly larger than those above them, less neat but still clearly sewn by the same person.

'I wore them to your funeral. I wore them each time I visited your grave. Every time it got too much, every time I had to fight to breathe and put one foot in front of the other, every time just keeping going seemed like the hardest thing in the world I took them out of the box and carried them with me. Funny, I always imagined you watching me from wherever your soul had gone to and scoffing at me, muttering about sentiment and ridiculousness. It made me feel better.'

He tugs Sherlock closer, interlacing their hands again to stop his own from shaking, 'I lived with Bill and Mary for almost six months after your funeral. Mary was so kind, so welcoming, despite the fact she had two little ones and Bill to run around after. I did stuff round the house while Bill was at work, acted as an unpaid babysitter and all the while I tried to work out what I wanted to do. I think I might have stayed until they kicked me out if the investigation into your work hadn't been opened. But with a chance to clear your name I had to come back, had to do what I could. It helped. For a while. Writing up all my notes properly, going through all of yours, reliving the cases and the bits in-between, the laughter and the ... it kept the living you in my head and the nightmares of blood and sightless eyes at bay. I still saw Bill, Mary and the kids once a week and I even, at Mary's urging, started doing some locum work again. But then the investigation was done, your name was cleared and all I felt was flat. You were still dead, I was still alone and there was really only one person in the world who I felt able to talk to and Bill was busy with his family, busy living. All I was doing was existing, coming to a semblance of life for those few hours a week where I felt like I was part of something normal, sitting at their dinner table and listening to the kids chattering and Bill and Mary talking about their jobs. But it was enough. Just. Enough for me to manage with. Then, two weeks ago ...'

John drops his head onto Sherlock's chest, struggling with the tightness in his lungs and throat. Sherlock unlinks their hands so he can cradle the back of John's head, fingers brushing through his hair as rubs soothing circles on his back with the other hand. When John continues, he speaks into Sherlock's shirt.

'A heart attack of all things, Sherlock! Tell me how that can be right! How an ex-marine who runs his own fitness centre can die of a heart attack at forty five! I don't even know what to do with that. It's all so wrong. I went over to see Mary as soon as I heard, asked what I could do but all she said was that she'd let me know when the funeral was. She had her parents there, she said, so she didn't need anything from me but I could see it in her eyes. See the real reason she didn't want me around. That she was thinking the same thing I was ... why had it been Bill and not me? He had everything to live for and I ... I had nothing. By the time I'd walked home I'd decided. I made a cup of tea, got the pants out, fetched a needle and thread and said my goodbyes to Sergeant William Arthur Murray. I spent the next few days sorting everything out, cancelling my shifts, making sure I'd paid all the bills, tidying everything up round here. Then last night I sat down again, had a cup of tea and then a glass of the Talisker you like so much and sewed one last set of initials onto the pants. I put them on this morning, went to Bill's funeral and then went to see you ... one last time.'

John lifts his head, ignores the tears that are pouring down his cheeks and yanks his jeans further down his hips, exposing the remaining stitching. Sherlock's horrified gasp as he sees J.H.W. below W.A.M. is enough for John to know he understands.

'You ... you were going to ...'

'Yes, I was.' John doesn't soften it, can't soften it. 'I wasn't expecting to be here now, Sherlock. I'd run out of will and I'd run out of reasons. Nothing made sense and I was tired. Tired of trying, tired of pretending everything was ok, tired of hurting all the time. I've been hurting for so long, Sherlock, that it felt like an eternity. I didn't even think Hell could be worse than the yawning emptiness inside me. I ... I just didn't want to do it anymore.'

'You ...' There are tears in Sherlock's eyes, welling over his eyelashes and shattering down his cheeks with each blink. He shudders a breath in, fighting for air before he can get the rest of the sentence out, '... you don't still want ... You won't will you?'

'No, Sherlock,' John feels oddly calm at the truth in his words, 'I won't. Not now.'

'Oh John, I ...' Sherlock lifts his hands to John's head, fingers stroking the lines etched deep by the pain of the last three years, then moving to map the gaunt edges of his face and down, over John's too thin body. The panic in Sherlock's eyes shifts to guilt and remorse and then words are streaming out of his mouth once more, frantic and broken. 'I love you, John. I love you and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so very, very sorry. Can you ... are we alright?'

John answers him with a kiss, because he can't say yes, because it's not alright, not yet.

But he can show Sherlock, with a soft press of lips and gentle caresses as they breathe each other's air, that it will be.

That they will make it alright.

Together.

* * *

_**Authors Note:** _

_The title is taken from a poem by Wilfred Owen which, although talking about a different type of send-off, does hold the same overall feel as the start of this fic - that too few return from war._

_I have taken the same line that AbundantlyQueer does in Two Two One Bravo Baker and made John a Captain in 40 Commando. It is possible that he could have completed his medical degree and the two foundation years that would have qualified him to be a GP in the UK and just made the age restriction to sign onto the Royal Marines Officer training programme at a month shy of 26 years old._

_I've gone down this route because I've been doing a lot of research into the Commandos and their work in Afghanistan in particular. The descriptions of the deaths of Matt and Danny have been created from a mix of documentary evidence and written reports about the Commando's time in Helmand although I've tried to not make anything too graphic._

_I've also attempted to get the timings of their tours out in Afghanistan to fit in with both the timeline of Sherlock (thanks to Lyricalsky for her hard work creating a coherent timeline for both series) and the presence of 40 Commando in Sangin._

_I also realise that this is complete outside the normal scope of Red Pants fics but the idea came to me and would not let go. I hope that no-one minds too much._


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